


Upper Hand

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Canon Era, Corporal Punishment, Flogging, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shame, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:37:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A remix of the flogging scene from Sineala's "Chosen Man" told from Esca's POV, plus what happens to him immediately afterward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upper Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Chosen Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/681763) by [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala). 



> As a newcomer to AO3, to "Eagle" fandom, and to fanfic writing in general, I am deeply indebted to Sineala for her very kind and flattering encouragement when I reached out to her and asked if it would be okay to write this remix. She has also been very helpful with answering questions. I am also very grateful to Carmarthen, who was the beta for this remix and has likewise been very encouraging.
> 
> Obviously, "Graphic Depictions of Violence" refers to the beating itself. Also, there are allusions to things in "Chosen Man" that happened or were revealed after the flogging; as such, this remix should be considered to contain spoilers for that fic. (I cannot recommend enough that you set aside an afternoon or late evening in order to read "Chosen Man" if you have not already done so; it is absolutely gorgeous.)
> 
>  **Edited to add:** Also, there are nightmare scenes which contain wartime violence (battle; slaughter of civilians), as well as additional flogging. I apologize for not remembering to mention these in my original note.

Hours of marching back to the camp in the heat have drained Esca's fury, cooled the blazing vindication of seeing his arrow fly true into the throat of the Caledonian.

So has the prospect of a beating at the hands of Marcus Flavius Aquila.

It is not the beating itself, so much. Esca has knelt for the vine-staff many times; the mass of scars stretched over the sharp knobs of his spine testify to that. The pain is nothing he cannot bear. And while he'd kill that blue-painted northern swine again, a hundred times over, he knows that Aquila cannot let the flagrant disobedience pass without correction.

It is the man—the handsome, clever, loyal, generous, brave, lonely, self-tormenting, and, damn him, maddeningly _obtuse_ man—who will be wielding the staff.

Oh, he trusts that Aquila will not take a savage glee in correcting him, as Viridio did and Laetitianus does. He'd wager that the entire affair will take no longer than needed to set the example. The formal question asked flatly and answered flatly, then six or seven strokes of the vine-staff, delivered with just enough force to leave marks. Easily borne with dignity, and then his sympathetic men will buy him drinks and, out of Roman earshot, assure him that the killing of the Caledonian was _very_ nicely done.

But there is… something unresolved between himself and Aquila, it might be said. No matter how the both of them hold themselves during the beating, there will be an awkwardness to it, to say the least.

He shrugs, mentally, and tells himself that, of a surety, only Lugh knows whether the beating will ultimately matter to whether Aquila will ever say, _Yes, Esca, I am yours_ , will press his lips to Esca's, will kneel for him, will let Esca take him.

Will ever love Esca.

As they march into their area of the camp, Aquila calls out, "All of you are free for the rest of the day—all except Esca."

Men are usually beaten publicly, to serve as examples for their fellow soldiers. The other men blink in surprise for the briefest moment, then begin to stow their gear, then wander off for a bath, a meal, a drink.

Esca remains stock-still as they mill round and then past him. His face a frozen mask, he meets Aquila's eyes and holds them.

"My tent, soldier," Aquila snaps, then turns on his heel and stalks into the tent.

Esca follows. Once he is inside, Aquila pulls the tent-flaps shut, enfolding them both in tawny half-light. What air is in the tent is warm, heavy, still.

Esca clears his throat.

"You could do this in public, you know." His tone is mild, but his voice is hoarse… from screaming his defiance in Aquila's face, back in the woods? From not having spoken since, for hours? From… something else?

"I don't mind," he adds. "It's not as though it hasn't happened before."

Aquila turns away from him, toward his desk, and his voice seems strained.

"If you don't mind me beating you in public, that removes the general idea behind the public aspect of the punishment. Consider it a concession to your honour."

"That is not where my honour lies, centurion," Esca rejoins, still dry of tone, still raw of throat. "But if it would please you, by all means we can do this wherever you like. I will submit, as I have said."

Aquila reaches his desk and stands behind it with his back to Esca. His hand closes round his vine-staff. His next few breaths seem forced, mindful. _Is he afraid?_ Esca wonders as he follows his centurion to the desk. _Is he… **aroused?**_ He would swear Aquila is a man who would rather kneel for the rod or lash than wield it, though there are men who will eagerly do either.

But, he reminds himself, he does not know, cannot know for sure. In the day-dreams that come upon him unwilled, the night-dreams from which he awakes with a pounding heart and a stickied belly, Marcus Flavius Aquila is naked, pliant, the dark wide pools of his eyes seeking Esca's approval, begging for Esca's touch. But the Aquila he dreams of is just that: a figure of fantasy. The actual man is bound in so tight a web of Roman notions of "honour" and "duty" that, perhaps, not even Aquila himself could answer the questions in Esca's mind.

The centurion turns round, staff in hand, to face Esca, his face a mask of stern command. He asks the formal question: "Soldier, are you aware of the offense you have committed?"

The events of the afternoon flash through Esca's mind. His head rises on a jolt of prideful anger, but he schools his features and his glare into coldness.

"Yes, sir. I have been insubordinate. I killed a man of the Caledonii without just cause, against your express orders and against the orders of the mission."

"Indeed." Aquila tilts his head in acknowledgment, and his fingers tighten around the thin wood of the vine-staff. Esca sees them tremble, though the tremour is faint and he is sure Aquila thinks this has escaped his notice.

"Do you know what the punishment for this offense is?"

Esca nods. "You will beat me, sir."

"I will." Aquila's throat works briefly, and then he commands, "Take off your tunic."

Esca unclasps his belt, pulls his tunic over his head, drops it next to him. As the hem of the garment clears his eyes, he locks his gaze with Aquila's, willing defiance and pride into it to conceal his unease. He can feel his bare chest rising and falling with his shallowing breaths. He waits without speaking.

Aquila's next command breaks the silence: "Kneel."

Not a few of Esca's many beatings have been inflicted in private. In a tent—Triferus's, Viridio's, and now Aquila's—a desk serves adequately as a makeshift whipping post. He drops to his knees, smoothly, gracefully, and leans forward to brace his arms upon the top of the desk, resting his head atop them. 

Aquila walks round him to the other side of the desk. Esca hears the centurion's sharp intake of breath, then a heartbeat or two of utter silence. Then Aquila starts to breathe again—quickly, shallowly, almost gasping. 

And he does nothing. He says nothing.

Moments pass. Too many moments. The tension throughout Esca's body, as he waits for the familiar fire to break in rows across his back, heightens till he cannot stand it. And he demands, nearly snaps, "Well? Aren't you going to hit me?"

Aquila chokes out, nearly sobs: "I—I _can't._ "

Esca's head jerks up in surprise. He sees the dark eyes brimming with horror in a face drained of blood. The centurion's lips are parted in anguish. 

And Esca realizes that Aquila has never taken the full measure of his decanus's back before.

A wave of tenderness suffuses Esca, wraps painfully constricting cords round his heart. Stupid, really… he is the one kneeling for the rod, he is the one striped like a willful slave, he is the Briton to Aquila's Roman. But he wants to do nothing more than rise, clasp Aquila to him, press his lips to the marred olive skin of the centurion's throat, tell him he will never, ever have to hurt Esca. Ever.

He cannot.

Esca, no less than Aquila, has a duty to the men who serve under them. More than Aquila, actually, because none of those men have ever sworn a blood-oath to Aquila. If they no longer trust the centurion's word, they will no longer leap to obey it. In battle, this could be the death of them—and of other men. Including Aquila and Esca.

Esca licks ineffectually at his parched lips as he struggles with the tender impulse. When he has finally mastered it such that he trusts himself to speak, he says, still hoarse, "Aquila—"

The centurion interrupts him, repeating himself. "I can't do this." There is a note of helplessness in it, and his eyes close tightly. Alarm flares in Esca's chest.

Again, he waits until he trusts himself to speak, and then says, simply, "You have to."

"It will not teach you anything," Aquila snaps. "You will only do it again and again. You think I do not know that? It will only hurt you."

"It isn't about me." Esca's voice remains steady if hoarse, but his shoulders tremble with tension. "Half the century saw me disobey you. If you care anything about winning their respect, you must do this. If you do not punish me, they will try to get away with anything they can, all of them, and they will all be as insubordinate as I am, or worse."

He draws breath, and continues, "You are their commander. You need to do this. For them. Think of them. Not me."

Aquila shakes his head wildly in denial, but he speaks with the despair of a man who knows his interlocutor is right. 

"I can tell them I beat you—we do not need to do this—"

"You have to do this," Esca says once again, calmly, almost soothingly, as if trying to cajole a terrified horse into a fray. "You have already dragged me in here, in private. They will not be satisfied unless there are marks for everyone to see, later, and I can tell them how harsh you were on me, and then they won't step out of line." Again he pauses, and then adds—aiming for wryness, landing on reflectiveness—"Laetinianus of course likes to see my blood, but I hope you will not find that necessary."

There is a moment's pause, and he thinks he has convinced Aquila—and then, again, come the words "I can't."

The icy anger returns, flooding Esca and drowning all tenderness in it. He can bear— _just_ bear—Aquila's refusal to take him as a lover, despite how plainly Aquila would like to. It is painful, but it is fair: Aquila owes Esca no such thing, and, until his consent is given, the centurion's body and mind and heart are not Esca's to command. But _this_ —this soft-hearted breach of duty, this… _cowardice?_ That puts them, _all_ of them, in danger? No. _No._

"You _can,_ " he repeats, this time cold and hard. "You can and you must. You have to beat me."

"No."

And suddenly Esca's anger is no longer a cold one. "Come on, Aquila. Hit me!"

 _"No!"_ The centurion's voice is ragged. The vine-staff remains in his right fist, but his left hand clutches the edge of the desk, for he is as unsteady as a drunkard on his feet.

Esca can feel his features twist, his lips part in what Carantos calls his "death's-head smile."

"Are you weak? Is that the matter, Aquila? Are you afraid you won't be able to hit me properly?"

The quick hot flush of anger in Aquila's face gratifies him: a savage stab in the belly, almost like a pang of lust. The centurion utters a weak "I—," and Esca's next words ride right over it.

"You might be worried about that." His voice twists to match his smile, as if into a lash, hard and oiled and merciless. "Look how you're dressing already." He runs his eyes up and down Aquila, from the broad shoulders that fill his tunic to the muscular thighs within his braccae, and he forces a contemptuous laugh past the sudden thickening in his throat. 

"Your friends back in the legions, I'll bet they never imagined this, eh? So... unmanly. Lost your touch, have you? Going to flail at me, useless, like some woman? You probably couldn't even hurt me."

The dark eyes are sparking with fury now. _Good._ "Esca, what are you doing?"

"Beat me!" Esca shouts, full-voiced now. "Just hit me! Do it!"

Rooted to the spot where he stands, Aquila repeats through clenched teeth, _"I. Can't."_

"Oh, you _can,_ " Esca nearly spits. "I know you _could,_ if you wanted to. But you don't _want_ to." He lets that last bit drip with a nasty insinuation that the words themselves could never deliver. 

And then there's the next line to cross.

"Your father was a centurion, you said?"

The anger in Aquila's face admixes with terror. "Esca— _don't!_ " He can barely give breath to the words. "Don't make me do this, Esca. I don't want to do this to you." The word _please,_ unspoken, hangs in the air.

Another arrow has found its mark. Or, rather, a dagger, and Esca twists it. 

"I'm sure he disciplined his men, didn't he?" he chuckles without true mirth. "How do you think he'd feel, your father, if he could see you now? You're standing here telling me you can't possibly beat me, Aquila. I killed a man and you couldn't stop me, and you don't even want to punish me for it. Are you that weak? That soft? That incompetent? Isn't that what your father would think? Do you think he'd be proud of his son?"

 _"Stop talking!"_ Aquila roars. His hand gripping the vine-staff has risen in the air.

A bitter, vicious delight burns in Esca. He cannot have, may never have, the upper hand in Aquila's bed. But he has it now—ironically, kneeling at Aquila's feet as he is, stripped to the waist and awaiting new welts—and he's far from done using it.

He continues to laugh in the face of his centurion's impotent fury, watching it rise to match the vine-staff. "If you want me to stop, Aquila, you'll have to make me. Hit me. Do it. _Hit me now._ "

And, maddeningly, the damned Roman continues to plead with him. And that word, that word is no longer unspoken. " _Please,_ Esca." His tone is abject, the plea falling brokenly from his lips. "Don't."

Esca turns round a little more to face him, still leaning against the desk, and he fixes Aquila's eyes with his own. He has one last dagger to hand. When he finally speaks again, it is haltingly, and his voice is barely above a whisper. It's partly for effect, but… not entirely.

"I know _all_ your secrets, Aquila. And, oh, I can tell them. I can tell them to _everyone._ I will, if you don't hit me. I might anyway. Would you like me to tell them to you? Let's start with that."

 _Oh, **yes,** let's start with that._ A white-hot thread of lust weaves its way through his red-hot fury and frustration. Speaking the unspoken, after so long, will feel almost like spending, he thinks.

Aquila's face is nearly crumbling now under the double siege of rage and despair. "Esca—" he begins, but Esca cuts him off, still whispering.

"I've seen how you look at me. I am not stupid, and I am not blind, and I know. I know all of it. I know what you want me to do to you."

The centurion's hands are plainly shaking now, and his eyes glisten. "No, please—"

"You think you've been subtle? You haven't. It's sad, really, when you think about it." Another chuckle, dry as dead leaves. "You want to be the best centurion ever, you want to serve Rome with honour, and you desperately want one of your barbarian soldiers to fuck you till you can't walk. You should be on your knees here, not me. You'd like that." _So would I,_ he thinks, glad that Aquila can't see Esca's cock swelling in his braccae. And his tongue curls, with a loving menace, around the next word: _"Cinaede."_

"Lies." Aquila is nearly choking on the words. "Stop it. Stop telling these filthy, awful lies—"

"You mean the truth?" Esca retorts. "Oh, I'll tell it to the tribune. I'll tell _everyone._ "

_"Stop talking!"_

"Have you any family left alive I could send word to—"

Aquila's fury explodes square across his back and shoulders. He is no longer braced for it, and the blow drives his face into the edge of the desk, splitting his lip. For a few seconds he can see nothing but a throbbing whiteness. He tastes blood in his mouth, feels it on the desk, on his cheek. 

And the pain-fog clears, and he spits the blood onto the ground, and he continues.

"Is that all?" His voice is a bit thicker now, but it remains taunting. He feels the words coming on faster, and he realizes he's still hard, fiercely hard. "Is that the best you can do? Perhaps you're better at _suffering_ , you know—"

The vine-staff falls again, and again, and again. On his shoulders, across the blades, at the small of his back, everywhere in between. After each stroke he draws breath and strikes back with a whiplash of words, sneering at the pathetic blows Aquila has dealt him, volleying at the centurion every Latin slur against manhood he has ever heard, interspersing them with obscene verbal vignettes of himself fucking Aquila in the arse, in the mouth, in public, before their men, in the _praetentura_ of the garrison, in view of the enemy, Aquila moaning, begging him for more...

"—like that, harder, come on, _impudice_ … You'd gladly come to morning muster with my seed trickling down from under your Roman tunic and into your Roman boots, _pathice_ —"

Soon there is no time between blows to even take breath. Esca can feel drops of his blood spattering back down onto his broken skin each time the staff lifts from it. He is afire from nape and shoulders to just above his braccae, and it takes ferocious effort now not to cry out. And there is no anger left in him, nor lust—nor words. 

The blows stop. Esca, still on his knees, heaves from shoulders to waist with hoarse, ragged breaths. It is one of only two sounds in the tent, but his pain-addled senses can't readily identify the other.

And then there is a third: the muffled thud of the vine-staff dropping to the ground.

A while passes. Esca has no sense of time anymore, but it's a long while. Finally, he speaks, and his voice is as raw as if he'd screamed throughout the beating.

"You've a good arm on you, Aquila. You hit harder than Viridio ever did, that's for certain."

The centurion says nothing. He leans heavily on the desk, facing away from Esca.

Esca begins to rise, slowly, unsteadily. Every flayed inch of skin on his back and shoulders blazes with pain, and beneath it his muscles feel stiffer than if he'd been crouching in the woods for a day and a night.

At last, he is on his feet. And then Aquila turns to face him. The centurion's eyes are red and swollen, and tears have left tracks on his dark face. 

"Never." It is the voice of a man in whom something has broken. He still pleads, but without the note of desperate hope before the beating. " _Never_ do this again."

Esca stares at him, only half-focused. The haze of agony leaves him unable to react much to Aquila's state, to even care about it overmuch. _I suppose I should be grateful,_ he thinks with a flicker of grim amusement.

"Understood."

"Go to the infirmary," Aquila says dejectedly. "Can you walk?"

Esca nods, slowly, as it sends new flares of pain through his shoulders and neck. "I can walk." It's a lie, but he would rather drag himself, on his torn back, over sharp bits of metal all the way to the infirmary than be carried. He takes a few halting, shuffling steps backward. 

"Barley rations until the Ides," Aquila says, in the same pointless, lost tone. 

Slowly, gingerly, Esca makes his way to the edge of the tent. He works at the fastenings for what seems like yet another eternity, gasping and hissing as the motions pull at his abused shoulders. Finally the flaps fall open. And, slowly—he will do nothing quickly again for a long while, it occurs to him—he turns to face Aquila a final time.

"I wouldn't have told anyone, you know," he says, quietly. "I won't tell anyone."

And then he is outside, in the honey-gold evening sunlight. 

The fierce heat of the day has abated; the air is mild, a light breeze up. Bare to the waist, bleeding, coming out of the stifling tent, Esca is suddenly, violently chilled, and he shivers uncontrollably, which hurts. 

Nobody else is about. He is profoundly, almost pathetically grateful for this as he staggers to the nearest tree, braces himself against it, and vomits. Bile and traces of bucellatum spatter on the ground, flecked with blood. _The blood from my lip,_ he tells himself. His stomach continues to buckle and heave, and that motion hurts his wounds, too. He forces himself to take deep breaths until his stomach eases.

He can do this. He has to do this. The garrison is only half a mile away. He is the son of a chieftain, he is a Roman soldier, he is an accomplished scout and spy. Half a mile is as nothing.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths help him master the pain. They don't seem to clear his head. He realizes that a pair of hounds will hunt him all the way to the infirmary: the pain, and the weakness. To duck one will be to court the other. _No help for that,_ he thinks, as he makes his painstaking way, slow as a lamed man or an ancient one, toward the road to Trimontium.

It seems hours before he gains the road. He turns his back on the setting sun, grateful that, at least, that it will not be sending bright shards of light into his eyes.

Soon he realizes that, at this halting pace, before he reaches the garrison he will have no light at all.

The night is coming on. A mild night, sweet and rich with wood-scents and wildflowers. Esca might as well be in the teeth of a gale: A deep coldness, like that of stone, is sinking into him as blood continues to run from his movement-jostled weals and soaks into his braccae. Its iron tang draws midges, and he has no strength, none, to swat at them, even weakly. The wounds throb with a deep, rocking pulse that nearly takes him off his feet. When the midges bite into his savaged flesh, his vision swims and his gorge rises anew. He fears that if he stops to puke again he'll lose his direction. _Move. Keep moving. Straight ahead._ And he does.

And then the toe of his right boot strikes… something. A stone, a root. He has no idea. All he knows is that he is falling, a moment of panic blooming through the pain, and then more pain as he strikes the ground, half-prone, half on his right side. The blow to his hip and breast and cheekbone and outstretched palm reverberates through his torn lip, his welted flesh.

 _Rise. Rise, damn you,_ he tries to command himself.

_I… can't._

And his mind's reply brings back the image of Aquila, standing helplessly above him, not wanting to hurt him for anything in the world. This is the image he holds to himself as darkness closes about him.

 

The darkness, he thinks later, he has no idea how much later, is a liquid. It ripples, it sloshes, like wine in a cup. As it rolls to one side it admits the sound of a voice, a man's voice, alarmed, calling… no name, but calling. In Latin, in British.

The liquid shifts, rolls in waves, as Esca feels himself being lifted into the air. It is done slowly, with infinite care, but the dull throbbing of his welts erupts into bright jagged pain. He cries out, despite himself. The other man murmurs something; reassurance, underlain with anger.

Esca's chin comes to rest against a warm, solid, shifting protuberance. A shoulder. Another shoulder presses into his left hip. He clings hard to the other man's forearm, instinctively. Then there is motion, there is more pain and more sick-feeling. The dark waters close over his head again, mercifully.

When they next recede, he hears more voices, echoing off stone. The air is acrid with washing-urine and soft with the steam of boiling water, and pricked by bitter, woody scents. There is also sweat, and, faint but definite, a tinge of putrefaction.

He lies belly-down on… a cot, he thinks. The voices are above him, except for one moaning intermittently in pain, which seems about level with him, several paces away. He tries to lift his head, but a strong hand suddenly spans the back of it, and a cool, hard rim bumps against his sore lip.

"Drink. You'll need it."

He cannot remember the last time he has drunk anything. Perhaps a sip from a skin before he first saw the Caledonian in the woods. He drinks, weakly but steadily. It is fresh milk, but there is a bitterness to it. It wets his mouth, settles into his empty stomach—

—and it's a different blackness that envelops him this time. Heavy, warm, soothing. Through it, he smells a new sourness that he knows well but can't name just now. He feels wet, stinging swipes at his back, but the hurt is dulled, distant. Swaddled in lassitude, he does not even twitch. Then his welts are daubed with something that seems to draw the heat out of them, somewhat, and then they are bandaged.

The hand is at the back of his head again, the bowl at his mouth. This time Esca need not be bidden to drink; he does so deeply. Is the milk slightly bitterer, now? It has only just swirled into his stomach when he feels himself begin to slip, and the sweet, warm dark closes over him yet again.

 

It does not stay sweet, nor warm.

Esca is lying on the ground, but not in the Trimontium road. He is in a field, many miles south of the Wall. His eyes are closed and he tries not to let himself be seen to be breathing. Dead men lie to his right, his left, before him, beyond him. The air is rank with spilt innards, with shit, with smoke and ash and burning flesh. Amid men's shouts in the tongue of the Caledonii, against a roar of flame, he hears a woman's scream that slides into a guttural, bubbling sound. Why does his back throb so? It is whole; it is his side that bleeds into the earth. A babe bawls, then stops abruptly in mid-cry.

Now he is on his knees in chill spring mud, a sword at his throat and a fist in his hair. He can just barely understand the words of the man holding him, but the anger and mistrust in the voice are unmistakable. Esca tries to tell him that he and his men are just hunters, just traders, just lost, not sure how much he is believed or even understood. And then another Votadini shouts—Esca thinks the words are, "I'll cut that scar out from your throat myself, Roman!" He sees the bright spray of Triferus's blood, sees Laetinianus plunge forward with sword drawn. As the optio scythes down Votadini, he catches Esca's eye, and there is nothing but poison in his.

And now Esca is kneeling at a desk, back bared. Viridio stands above him, berating him for something, bringing the vine-staff down onto his shoulders again and again. The figure of the centurion wavers, shifts, becomes the figure of his optio. " _Proditor, barbare, vapulo,_ " Laetinianus sneers, punctuating the insults with violent slashes of the staff, aiming at the scars of old beatings, even at wounds he's already dealt Esca that have not healed. And then Laetinianus becomes Aquila, crimson-faced and wet-eyed, his staff tearing through the skin on Esca's back like a plough in the earth—

And then, again, Esca hears the stone-echoes of the infirmary, smells the miasma of steam and stale piss and bitter medicines and foul exudations. Echoing toward him are footsteps. _Aquila's footsteps,_ he thinks, with more clarity than he's felt since he stood up, wretchedly, from the front of the desk. But his head feels far from clear. Does he dream, still, or is he awake?

 _Dreaming still,_ he decides. Why would the man he named the most hateful things one can name a Roman man come to his sick-bed? Why would he have brought Esca his forgotten tunic? As soon as dream-Aquila lays it on the cot, Esca clutches it to himself, breathing in his own sweat, the smells of the woods, the smell of Aquila himself. 

And why would Aquila ever reach out and brush a stray lock from Esca's forehead, ever so tenderly, and say, as voicelessly as if they were in the woods with Caledonii bristling all about them, _"I'm sorry"_?

No, he is dreaming, he is sure, as Aquila's dream-steps recede from him again. And then he slips into a sleep without ghosts, without pain, that cradles him as close as he cradles the tunic.


End file.
